Cavendish family

As a place-name, it is first recorded as Kavandisc in 1086 in the Domesday Book,^[2] and appears to have a meaning of 'Cafna's Pasture', from personal byname Cafa/Cafna (from caf 'bold, daring'), and edisc 'enclosed pasture'.^[3][2] By 1201, it was in use as the surname de Cavendis (borne by one Simon de Cavendis in the Suffolk Records of Pleas before the King (specifically King John)), recurring in 1242 as Cavenedis,^[2] and again in 1302 as de Cavendish.^[4]

The family, hitherto only middling gentry, but with financial roles at court, rose to prominence under the Tudor dynasty, when Sir William Cavendish was a courtier who made a great deal of money handling the disposal of the spoils of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This was augmented in the reign of Elizabeth I, after he became the much younger Bess of Hardwick's second husband. It was probably she who pursuaded Sir William to sell his lands in the south of England, around the manor of Cavendish, Suffolk, and buy the Chatsworth estate in her native Derbyshire.

Bess outlived Sir William by almost fifty years, and dominated the lives of her Cavendish children by force of personality, and her money. The family, and that of Bess's hugely rich last husband, George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, were marked by fractious relationships, and Sir William's oldest son Sir Henry Cavendish was disinherited by Bess, the bulk of her large wealth going instead to Sir William's second son William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire, who received his title from James I in 1618, supposedly paying £10,000 for it.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes was employed as a tutor by the Cavendish family mainly for William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire; the two went on an early Grand Tour of Europe from 1610. William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire was a prominent Royalist who spent some years in exile during the English Civil War, having been impeached and with his estates sequestrated until the English Restoration.

William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, Bess's grandson by her third Cavendish son, was also a leading Royalist, unlike his cousin William fighting in the wars as an important but apparently not very good general. He also went into exile, and remained in favour for the first years of the Restoration, but then had a distant relationship with the court. He was England's leading authority on the training of fighting horses.

After missing nation-leading and internationally definitive largesse and empire-building in Charles II's five-peer acronym of the Cabal ministry, William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, was the first of the name to rise to duke. He co-wrote the 1688 Invitation to William to exclude Catholics from the monarchy, which set in motion the Glorious Revolution in that year (and which also ultimately had the result of shifting more power to Parliament). The Invitation's authors were later known as "the Immortal Seven". This pre-dated the Spencer-Churchills' centrality under campaigns (most of all the Battle of Culloden) against the Catholic pretenders to the throne.

High appointments were often won by senior title holders and some juniors among the Cavendishes, from 1688 until about 1887, and marked the family's ascendancy, along with the Marquesses of Salisbury and the Earls of Derby. The notable lines descend from Sir John of Cavendish in the county of Suffolk (c. 1346–1381). Other peerages included the Dukedom of Newcastle; Barony of Waterpark (County Cork, Ireland); the Barony of Chesham (in Buckinghamshire); and through a daughter marrying into the Bentinck family (leading to combined surnames), the Dukedom of Portland (a title which ceased in 1990, and most of the wealth of which is in the Howard de Walden Estate, which has kept minor, overarching interests in and reviews changes across most of central Marylebone, London).

Concessions to populists of post-imperial meritocracy movements shifted power to industrialism and to the House of Commons. The 1911, 1958, 1963, and 1999 transformations of the House of Lords permanently ended key influence by Cavendish and many other British noble families. Under primogeniture, the senior branches of these families still dominate in inter-family (relative) wealth and titles.

The head of the modern family is Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire, whose Georgian mansion, Chatsworth House, in the Peak District attracts many visitors with its gardens, iconic high-jet fountain, Capability Brown grounds, and fine-art collection. Among its past urban assets with lasting influence, this branch of the family had a large house in London, on which many grand apartments and houses now stand, including Devonshire Square.

The family seat is Chatsworth House, a Grade I listed property, in Edensor, near Bakewell, which is owned as part of the Chatsworth Estate. According to the Estate website, "Chatsworth is very much home to the 12th Duke and Duchess, [who] are intensely involved in the day to day running of the business and upkeep of" the House. This area has been the home of the Cavendish family since 1549.^[5][6]

The explorer Thomas Cavendish "the Navigator" (1555–1592) was descended from Roger Cavendish, Sir John Cavendish's brother.

The 3rd to 9th Dukes of Portland were descended from the Cavendish family through the female line, and took the surname Cavendish-Bentinck or a variant thereof. Their principal seat, Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, came to them through the Cavendish connection.